The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.

 —C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 describes the social and epistemic context in which the Antichrist assumes power and the whole world believes a delusion. By that I mean humanity will be prepared for his deceptions on a mass scale. But how? How is it possible for people the world over to give themselves up to a ruler with nothing but murder and violence in his heart? Similar questions have been asked of many nations and peoples who welcomed evil tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and a host of others. These figures had loyal followers, many of whom were “decent” people at one point. These followers later found themselves guarding internment camps, managing gulags, or forcing children into ovens. How does this happen? It happens when we refuse to love the truth and begin to believe a lie.
Accurately grasping reality, that is, knowing the world as it is, hinges on two critical components. First, there must be knowledge. Knowledge involves having good reasons for believing something you take to be true. Simply believing something, no matter how sincerely, without any good reason for believing it, doesn’t mean you know it. There are significant implications for this claim, but for now, let’s just say that to have real knowledge you must have good reasons to believe the things you believe. But knowledge is not enough. Character matters. It turns out, without good character, the truth will be obscured and won’t benefit us. Without a certain kind of character our perceptions will be faulty at best and perverted at worst. Certain dispositions of the heart are necessary to know and apply the truth. But dispositions of the heart also filter reality.  Here one might ask, does our character prevent us from having knowledge? Or from using knowledge in a moral and godly way? This is a deep question and it’s not obvious that they are mutually exclusive. As will be seen, a depraved heart both keeps us from knowledge as well as misapplies the knowledge we have.
I think at a basic level, what I call character refers to our sincerest and most authentic selves. When I was a child, we would say character is who you are when no one is watching. We express our character principally in the objects of our love, and we love whatever we think is The Good, or the best possible thing to love. Often our character manifests itself in the form of our deepest affections or desires, so that to speak of good character refers to those affections and desires aimed at the right things in the right way.
Cultivating right affections for the right objects is the hard work behind proper formation. If my affections are disordered, then out of this disordered heart many evils and vices will grow. For example, if I confuse the wrong things for The Good—drugs, sex, greed, and violence—and respond by loving them, then I will cultivate all manner of evil in my life. The simple reason is that what we love colors how we see the world and affects what can be known. When we love the wrong things, every evil is possible. It comes as no surprise that history is littered with examples of unimaginable wickedness. History is our sad story of confused and perverted loves, from slavery to sex trafficking.
As it turns out, and more to the point, there are epistemic consequences for our disordered affections as well. “Epistemic” is just a fancy word to describe how we come to know things. When I say there are epistemic consequences for loving the wrong things—having a faulty character— I mean that some things in the world cannot be properly known unless they are properly loved. For example, it just isn’t possible for me to know my wife if I don’t love her. Personal relationships are the most obvious example of how a lack of proper affection can restrict the depth of our knowledge. We cannot know those whom we do not love. But disordered affections do more than limit relational knowledge. They also pervert our perception of reality and warp our capacity to know the truth.
There is an excellent example of this in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. In that book, Lewis describes the creation of the magical land of Narnia. Uncle Andrew, his nephew Diggory, Diggory’s friend Polly, the evil Witch, and the Cabby with his horse Strawberry, all witness Aslan the Lion bring life to the unformed substance of Narnia. Aslan’s mode of creation is a beautiful song, one which is immediately attractive to the children and the Cabby. However, it is repellant and unbearable to the Witch and Uncle Andrew. Though everyone present hears the same song, not everyone appreciates the music. The narrative gives special attention to Uncle Andrew:

When the lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a Lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing— only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course, it can't really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about making yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon could hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song.  (p.149-150)

If you’ve read the story, then you probably weren’t surprised by Uncle Andrew’s response. He’s a drunkard, a coward, lazy, and he takes advantage of his family. Furthermore, he’s greedy, selfish, and aligns himself with the wicked Witch. The story’s Narrator states emphatically why Uncle Andrew found the Lion’s song so disagreeable. “For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.” Uncle Andrew embodies a small, ugly soul with deeply maligned affections. He loves himself and nothing else, and because of this cannot love Aslan’s song. Uncle Andrew’s life of perverted affections leads him to reject the witness of creation all around him.
But rejecting the truth doesn’t end with no beliefs. Truth must be replaced by lies for the rejection to be complete. Uncle Andrew soon convinces himself that instead of singing the Lion is growling, until finally, “he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he wanted to” (p.150). Uncle Andrew has, in the words taken from Scripture above, “refused to love the truth” and instead taken “pleasure in unrighteousness.” While events from his perspective now seem to make sense—Lion’s don’t sing they growl— he has rejected the truth of what really is the case. He now lives in his own delusion— a world of his own making, full of growling Lions and savage beasts. Years of vice have altered his taste for The Good, cultivating a pallet accustomed to selfishness and pride, instead of truth and virtue. Thus, when presented with the beauty of the Lion’s song he finds it unbearable. Sadly, there’s no going back; the effects are permanent. Later, Diggory pleads with Aslan to save his Uncle, but Aslan can do nothing for him,  “He thinks great folly, child,” said Aslan “…and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would only hear growlings and roarings. Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!” (p.203) The problem isn’t that Aslan doesn’t want to help Uncle Andrew, but that Uncle Andrew has inoculated himself against the Truth.
Let’s recap for a second. Grasping reality depends on both knowledge and character. Knowledge refers to having good reasons for your beliefs, and character refers to the real person under your skin. You express your character, your authentic self, in what you love and how you love it. Disordered affections not only generate vice but warp your ability to possess knowledge. Uncle Andrew served as a mini test case for these reflections. We can go one step further.
The story doesn’t allow us to discern when Uncle Andrew had so corrupted his soul that he no longer desired the truth. Changes like this seem less a discreet moment and more a gradual transition. At some point along that spectrum Uncle Andrew had altered his heart even if when that decisive moment occurred is unclear. I imagine there was a point at which he looked down a fork in the road: to the left, the broad road of depravity and ruin, and to the right the narrow road which leads to life. At the outset, the distinction between the two seems marginal at best. When looking down either side, it’s not obvious how far the paths will eventually diverge and it can seem easy to go back if one has made a wrong turn. But the more one walks on the wrong road the harder it is to go back, until eventually there’s no desire to change course.  There’s a kind of echo to this transition when the Lion’s song becomes merely a growl. Uncle Andrew seemed to hear the song at one point until he couldn’t. But when did the change occur? There’s no telling.
Many people stand at their own proverbial fork in the road, thinking they have time to change their minds and get right with God, not realizing that every decision against a life of repentant faith advances in the wrong direction and cultivates the wrong affections. Traverse that road long enough and the idea of doubling back towards the truth becomes increasingly distasteful and progressively impossible, until all vestiges of proper affection are gone, truth is replaced with a lie, and reality is nothing but a delusion; they cannot hear the Lion’s song as anything but a growl. The consequences will be devastating. Applied to the Scripture passage above, God will simply turn people over to their deluded hearts since they refused to love the truth. I worry for those who think they have time to figure things out, as if the option is forever available. It might not be.
--Church of New Hope

The Fullness of God’s Blessings
“Blessed is the man…” Psalms 1:1
 
Psalm 1 explains in poetic detail how to enjoy the fullness of peace and prosperity, God’s shalom, here and now. The Old Testament concept of shalom describes creation as it enjoys God’s favor and blessing. Shalom means more than simply peace, but is the combination of peace, blessedness, and flourishing.  Thus, the Fall of Mankind in Genesis 3 fractures God’s shalom by removing the conditions of his favor, namely, obedience. In place of shalom is the convoluted world of sin and brokenness we now know. If to live under God’s rule and reign is to enjoy his shalom— his peace— then sin and living in rebellion to God’s rule and reign is the opposite of shalom and is instead called death. God told Adam he would die the day he ate the forbidden fruit because God knew it would immediately remove Adam from God’s shalom, the source of Adam’s life. Wickedness is often described as death, not merely as divine punishment, as terrifying as that is, but because sin separates us from God who is the very source of our life and being. To be cut off from God by sin is to be cut off from life. 
A person living in God’s shalom is said to be a blessed person. More specifically in the passage above, the word blessed is the Hebrew word asher, meaning happiness. Blessedness so described results from living in the way of righteousness as indicated by the Psalmist, i.e., delighting in the law of God and living accordingly. The blessing refers not merely to material prosperity or a positive emotional state, though these are certainly not excluded, but to being rightly related to God. Living in this state of rightness before God carries with it the blessing of his favor. It means connection with the source of blessedness, God himself. There is, then, a tight relationship between enjoying God’s shalom by living rightly and being called a blessed person.  Those who walk in the way of righteousness and enjoy God’s favor are called blessed, while the wicked and the depraved will never know this state of blessedness and can only expect wrath and destruction. 
The connection between blessedness, happiness, and shalom is mirrored in the New Testament as well. Jesus had this in mind when he was explaining the Kingdom of God during his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-8). The same Greek word used to pronounce a blessing over those listed in the beatitudes (makarios) is the word used in the Greek translation Psalms 1. Thus, Asher in Hebrew and Makarios in Greek refer to the same status of those who walk in the way of righteousness.  Jesus takes this Hebrew concept of blessed happiness as described in Psalm 1 and presents it as the primary way in which we enjoy God’s favor. Two modes of existence are thus presented— the way which leads to life and the way which leads to death. Jesus tells us plainly to “enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it, Matthew 7:13-14. Only by walking the path God has set can anyone know blessedness in this life and in the life to come.
As it turns out, the way of life and death describes the individual steps we take along the path every day, whether we are believers or not. For unbelievers, this “walking the narrow path” begins with initial repentance to faith in Christ for salvation. If you want to enjoy life in God, there is no other way than by turning from your sins, believing that Jesus died and rose again, and confessing him as your Lord and Savior. Without this, you will forever remain as the wicked whom God burns like the chaff in the wind (Psalm 1:4-5). For believers, this means our initial experience of salvation continues progressing along the path of righteousness as we seek to embody more and more the life God reveals in his Word. While short and beautiful, the message of Psalm 1 is powerfully simple. Walk in the way of righteousness and you will enjoy God’s blessing, but flirt with the way of the wicked and you will be caught up in their destruction.
—Church of New Hope

“The Unchanging God in a Shifting World”
 Inspired by the writings of A.W. Tozer and Charles Spurgeon

"For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."
— Malachi 3:6 (KJV)

In a world tossed by the waves of uncertainty, one anchor holds fast: the immutability of God. Divine immutability—that glorious doctrine that declares our God is unchanging in His nature, character, purpose, and promises—is not a cold theological truth, but a warm refuge for every trembling heart.
Tozer once wrote, "What peace it brings to the Christian's heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself." God is never surprised, never improved, never weakened, never weary. He is not subject to the progression of time or the whims of emotion. The God who reigns today is the same who thundered at Sinai, who wept at Bethany, and who died and rose again in Jerusalem. There is no shadow of turning in Him.
Spurgeon, in his mighty voice, thundered these words: “There are no furrows on the brow of eternity.” God is not evolving. He is not learning, not adapting, not being redefined by the cultures of men. His holiness is not softened by time, nor is His love diminished by our failures. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is not a dull sameness but a radiant constancy. His mercy today is as full and rich as it was when He saved the thief on the cross. His justice as pure, His truth as sure, His Word as living.
If God could change, He would not be God. A changing god would be unstable—capable of altering His promises, shifting in His judgments, or fluctuating in His affections. Such a god could not be trusted. But our confidence is rooted in the certainty that He cannot change. He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion, not because you are consistent, but because He is.
When you feel unworthy, remember—His grace does not wax or wane based on your performance. When trials come, know that His strength is not diminished by your storm. When your soul is parched and weary, His fountain has not run dry. He remains ever-faithful, ever-present, and ever-sufficient.
Let us not only rest in this truth but let it stir us to worship. How majestic is a God who needs no mending! How worthy is a Savior whose love cannot fade! Let His immutability humble our pride, calm our fears, and ignite our hearts to trust and obey.
The world may shift, friends may falter, and your own heart may fail—but the Rock of Ages stands firm.
Prayer:
O God, our unchanging Lord, how glorious You are in Your constancy. Teach us to rest in Your faithfulness when all around us is unstable. Strengthen our hearts to trust in Your Word, knowing that it is forever settled in heaven. Thank You that we are not consumed because You do not change. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The Plague of St. Cyprian

“…the bowels loosened into a flux exhaust the strength of the body…a fever contracted in the very marrow of the bones breaks out into ulcers of the throat…the intestines are shaken by continual vomiting…the blood-shot eyes burn…the feet of some or certain parts of their members are cut away by the infection of diseased putrefaction…by a weakness developing through the losses and injuries of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing impaired, or the sight blinded.”  St. Cyprian of Carthage, On Mortality, 252 A.D.

Saint Cyprian of Carthage had the privilege of pastoring during a pandemic afflicting much of Roman Empire. The above-mentioned quote comes from his work On Mortality and is a description of the plague vexing his people. It was written to encourage, challenge, and strength believers in the midst of terrible suffering. Death was lurking everywhere, and people were abandoning even basic decency. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria during the same period of plague, writes, “At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses like dirt…but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.” Christians living in the ancient world also had to grapple with the reality of a pandemic. Without taking away from those who have suffered during COVID and beyond, I might add that their experience was probably a harsher than ours. They didn’t have hospitals or vaccines. And if the plague didn’t touch you directly, there was still the crippling fear of a slow and agonizing death. But what can we say to those tormented either by disease or demoralizing fear?
Here are a couple points of encouragement from Cyprian’s work. First, Cyprian’s comfort is stern. He challenges to us evaluate whether we truly believe the things we claim about God, resurrection, and eternal life. If in fact we believe that this world is not ultimately our home, then debilitating fear of death is inappropriate for Christians. Cyprian reminds us that the fear of death and disease has no place in the eternally secure joy rightfully ours in Christ. He says, “If we believe in Christ let us have faith in his words and promises, that we who are not to die forever may come in joyful security to Christ with whom we are to conquer and reign for eternity.”
Cyprian wants the anticipation of heavenly joy to saturate life here on earth and in doing so admits to no room for fear or despondency. He thinks it strange for people to believe in life everlasting on the one hand and be gripped by fear on the other. Do you believe that God has the sum of all blessedness waiting for you in his presence? How you respond to the afflictions of life reveals whether this is so. Second, the plague also occasions a deeper examination of our hearts. Often times we are far more attached to the pleasures and things of this world than we realize. Cyprian thinks that many of his people simply love this world and that’s why they fear death. Our love of money and material goods becomes crystalized at the threat of loss. Suffering has a purifying effect and makes utterly transparent the inner recesses of the soul. Hear Cyprian’s question to us all: “Why then do we pray and entreat that the kingdom of heaven may come, if earthly captivity delights us?” 
His question stings and is more than rhetorical. In our songs, prayers, and sermons we often entreat the Lord to come quickly and remind each other of heaven. At the same time, we weep and wail or spend our time and resources as if we have no hope to experience the blessedness of eternal joy! The loss of earthly things ought not to cut us to the heart.  Brothers and sisters, God is good to show us the true state of our affections. As a good pastor, Cyprian cuts us no slack. If we claim to be on the cusp of heaven but cringe as we approach the precipice, we prove our affirmations to be hollow. He writes, “we are prevaricators of our hope and faith, if what we say seems pretended, feigned, falsified. It profits nothing to show forth virtue in words and destroy truth in deeds.” We might make many claims about our faith, but the reality is demonstrated in how we live. Nothing makes this more evident than our response to adversity.  Let me be clear: how we respond to the ugly face of death and loss says more to the world about our convictions than anything we might say.
Our afflictions not only challenge us to evaluate what we really believe and occasion deeper heart examination, they also prepare us to receive the eternal weight of glory. God forms us into the people he wants us to be using the rough edges of life here and now. We need only to fix our eyes on the incomparable beauty of our crucified and resurrected King.
 
So, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Pastor John

6 min read 
Seek Your True Purpose

Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you, Matthew 6:33
Always keep the true purpose of life before your eyes, and strive after it with all your might so that it will always and eternally be well with you. —Willem Teellink
Willem Teellink (1579-1629), Dutch Reformed father of the Further Reformation and master of the spiritual life, has some sage advice worth considering. Years of pastoring coupled with a joyful commitment to religious exercises uniquely equipped him to address the perennial problem of human existence— our purpose. In his short book The Path of True Godliness, Teellink identifies the purpose of life and how we might go about maximizing that purpose. In utterly plain language, he writes, “our real purpose in life is to do all things for God’s glory, for the progress of our soul’s salvation, and to win others so that they may be saved.” Simply put: We exist to bring God glory; we find that glory in salvation and reflect that glory in sharing it with others.With exacting precision, Teellink unpacks each element contained within the purpose of life and identifies the ways in which we fail to acquire it. Specifically, he brings his discussion on the purpose of life to bear upon considerations of spiritual warfare. What do I mean? Only that you and I have an enemy, Satan and his powers of evil, committed to peeling our time, our talents, and our treasures away from our divinely given purpose so as to rob God of his glory. What are these “crafty attacks” that Teellink identifies so that we can avoid them?The first is ignorance. “Our spiritual enemy persuades many people to live in total wantonness, just as they please, without ever knowing the purpose of life.”  Teellink rightly points out the spiritual and moral consequences of living ignorant of our purpose.  All of us, every human being on earth, was created for Divine glory and so a failure to know this purpose degrades God given dignity into varying degrees of self-centered immorality or wantonness. In cruel twist, such wasteful living actually propagates and insulates our ignorance. But a failure to know what we ought to know is no excuse. So, what better way to swerve us from the path than by ignorance of what God desires? Teellink observes that these people “go on walking thoughtlessly” right into eternal darkness! The second attack is more indirect. Instead of pursuing their life’s purpose, some people chase after dreams and goals irrelevant to eternity:
“Satan holds a wrong goal before some people’s eyes and minds, and they will not be moved from it. For example, they want to build their own house, increase in wealth, leave their children a rich inheritance…They focus all their energies on this goal and are so busy pursuing it that it becomes their most important occupation. The work of the Lord is nothing to them but a drag.”  
To be sure, there is nothing inherently wrong with leveraging the things of this world for the sake of flourishing, but Teellink challenges us to think through our motives and intentions. Am I leveraging my gifts for the Kingdom of God or attempting to build my own little kingdom?The last attack is the most subtle and seductive. Here a man or woman pursues the right object, God’s glory, but does so only half-heartedly. There is just enough effort to calm a tender conscience, but such believers fail to pour out their souls for the work God has given them. How might we tell the difference? Teellink gives us a discernment tool:  
“Although these people seem to make the glory of God their priority in life, they fail to do it with the firm conviction and commitment that they should. As long as they can accomplish this purpose with ease and as long as circumstances are favorable for their flesh, they are fine. But they back out whenever putting God first conflicts with their own profit or popularity or something else they cherish.”
If I quit when things get hard, or uncomfortable, or walk away when “godliness” fails to satisfy my need for affirmation or fulfillment, it’s likely that God’s glory isn’t really my purpose. If I am okay with giving God his due so long as the cost is minimal and relatively easy then Teellink suggests we are, in fact, serving ourselves. Oh Christians! How wrong everything is when our hearts delude us in this way!How about you? Do you know your purpose? Are you living out that purpose now? These questions consistently press us back to reflect upon our standing before God. Does my soul exist for his glory? Truly? There is not greater joy in life than to fully live out your purpose and no greater struggle than in pouring your life out for the same  
“Think how terrible and monstrous it would be if the sun, created to give light to the world, were to spread thick darkness instead. What terror this would cause ! How horrible it would be for us! Or if fire, created to give heat, were to discharge fierce frigid cold! Consider further what it means when a Christian, created and regenerated to let his spiritual light shine and so glorify God, misses the purpose of his life…”
Father, you are so loving and gracious to us and we are so utterly powerless without you! Please be merciful to us and help us see that you and you alone are all we could ever want or need. Help us to pour out every drop of your grace in service to you, for we are but unworthy servants. Our hearts desire is to be found waiting with lamps burning, ready and anxious to see your face.